Jeff Tunnell Interview

The Armchair Empire have posted an interview with GarageGames' Jeff Tunnell. The interview concentrates mainly on GarageGames itself but there is also the inevitable question of Willy Beamish's sequel:

Why didn't the world ever see a sequel to the Adventures of Willy Beamish? Were there plans for a sequel?

Like I said above, Willy Beamish was a very large project that pushed the technical envelope at the time with many industry firsts such as cell animations and working with Hollywood writers that made it a tremendous amount of work. At one time, I had Rise of the Dragon, Heart of China, Willy Beamish, and several other Dynamix games in development at one time. I was the hands-on director and designer of all of those titles as well as having responsibility for the development of other Dynamix titles. After Willy, I wanted a change, so I decided to move out of the building with a hand selected team of developers and work on some smaller, more creative ideas. Even though I had Willy 2 in development before I left, it just did not survive the transition, and was later cancelled. Unless you are there on the front lines, it is difficult to understand just how hard it is to keep a project on track, on budget, and politically viable in a company where many different people are trying to pull your project in many different directions.